


who am i, darling, to you?

by colazitron



Series: Skam Fic Week 2018 [1]
Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 08:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14848979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: Even plucked a magical flower three months ago.or: magical slice of life





	who am i, darling, to you?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nofeartina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nofeartina/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** I am in no way affiliated with the characters depicted herein or their creators. I made all of this up myself and am sharing it only for fun.
> 
>  **A/N:** Many, many, many thanks to the lovely [nofeartina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nofeartina), who listened to me complain about this verse and held my hand through figuring out what the hell I was doing.
> 
> This was inspired by [this delightful post](https://littlesoftheart.tumblr.com/post/161242866232/an-angel-boy-picked-starflowers-for-me-when-the) over on tumblr.

The curtains flutter in the breeze pulled into the bedroom through the open window when Even stretches, sheets cool under his bare limbs, eyes blinking sleep away lazily. He takes a deep breath, the scent of blooming flowers and trees heavy in the air. Distantly, there's a spike of cold come down from the melting snow on the mountains, a hint of salt on his tongue from the harbour.

 _Every room wakes up with you,_ Isak likes to say, and Even blinks at the ceiling, unseeing, and feels for it. The shift in the air as the breeze moves through the room, the pages of Isak's open notebook on his side of the bed fluttering a little, the hair falling over Even's forehead swept up off his face.

Even grins to himself and brushes the wind away, the hair on his arm standing up a little. It's cooler than he thought.

Isak's already up, his pillow fluffed and his half of the duvet dragged over to Even's side. He gets cold when Isak isn't in bed with him. Cold and lonely.

Pouting, he pushes himself upright in the bed, duvet falling down his chest to pool on his lap as he rubs a hand over his face.

“Morning, baby,” he mumbles, words carried off by the huff of breath after a yawn, and looks over towards the edge of the bed, trying to convince himself to swing his legs over and get up.

It's still cosy under the duvet, but he spots Isak's favourite sweatshirt over on the rack behind the mirror, so he puts his bare feet on the chilly, wooden floorboards, feels out the grooves in it for a moment, and then walks over to slip the sweater on. The forest green of it brings out the green in Isak's own eyes, but Even's favourite part of it is the soft inside. He'd ask Sana where she got it so he could get one of his own, but Even's _other_ favourite part of it is that it's Isak's. Maybe he should get another one for Isak. Grabbing a pair of underwear from their wardrobe, he yawns again and then makes his way out into the flat.

There's the smell of tea coming from the kitchen, barely covering the scent of all their herbs out on the balcony. The door's open, letting fresh air in, just the way Even likes.

Isak's sat at their table, chin propped up on his hand as he reads something from his tablet, pen in his other hand hovering over another notebook for note-taking. And there on the table next to him sits the pot of starflowers Even picked for him three months ago, when the sky was pink and the moon was full. They shouldn't have lasted longer than one lunar cycle, and even that's rare, but when they hadn't shown signs of wilting but instead started to sprout some small roots, Isak had potted them. At night, their centres still glow like tiny stars.

Even has mostly just accepted that their starflowers aren't going to obey the usual laws of magibotany, but Isak has been trying to work out just why they don't for a month now. Not that Even expected him to do anything else, really.

It's not for nothing that Isak's old professors at UiO keep asking him to come back, get habilitated, try for a professorial position, but Isak has always wanted to be a witch, as long as Even has known him, and as long as Isak can remember. There was never a question as to whether he'd invest in his magic or find something else to do with his life. So while Isak works closely with the physics department of UiO in setting up a permanent space for research to be done on the nature of magic, he focuses most on co-running a blog about all things magical with his best friend, Jonas.

When Isak doesn't stay in bed with Even in the morning, Even usually finds him here, sat at their table with a frown on his brow and a pout on his lips while he's researching something or other.

Even can't resist pulling in some more air to tangle it up in Isak's long hair, tumbling messily down over his shoulders.

Isak smiles and looks up.

“Good morning to you, too,” he says and tips his chin up, waits for Even to walk over and bend down to drop a kiss on his mouth. “Sleep well?”

Even hums his confirmation against Isak's mouth and kisses him again before he rights himself.

“You've had breakfast?” he asks and walks over to grab a mug from the overhead cabinet and pour himself some tea.

“Yeah,” Isak says distractedly, which probably means he's had a banana and/or a single piece of crisp bread.

“I'm going to make some eggs,” Even says, wrapping his fingers around the warming mug. “Want some?”

It takes Isak a few seconds before he replies, and even then it's only a questioning little hum.

Even ruffles his hair for his attention, grinning when Isak grumbles and reaches up to smooth it back behind his ears.

“I'm sorry, yes, please, eggs would be great,” he says, shooting Even a look and a sheepish smile.

“What's got you so enthralled?” Even asks, reaching over to grab eggs out of the fridge and an onion out of their pantry-cabinet.

“Jonas sent me this paper about naturally entangled systems,” Isak says. “He wants me to have a look at it for the blog.”

“It's promising?”

“Yeah, it's more research on entanglement in photosynthesis,” Isak says, already a little distracted again. “Sana's going to come over later. I think… I think this could be something.”

Even smiles to himself and gets out a bowl to crack the eggs into. It must be good if Isak's asked Sana over.

Isak is quiet, absorbed in his reading, and so Even only listens to the sizzling of the chopped onions in the pan while he scrambles the eggs and adds some sour cream, salt and pepper. Then he goes to grab a sprig of rosemary from the balcony – for memory and cognitive function – and makes the pestle dance around their mortar with a tiny little hurricane, grinding it a little.

“Hey, have you seen my grimoire? I couldn't find it yesterday,” he asks then, remembering how he'd looked for it the day before as his gaze catches on the few cookbooks they've acquired.

“Your grimoire?” Isak asks, looking up from his tablet when Even looks at him over his shoulder. “Is it not with mine and the cookbooks? You made that potion for Eva the other week, right?”

“Yeah, and I thought I put it back, but it's not there.”

“Maybe you put it in the pantry by accident,” Isak suggests, the teasing grin audible in his voice.

“I didn't put it in the pantry,” Even grumbles, but he opens all the cabinet doors anyway, just to make sure he really, definitely didn't. He's not sure if he's disappointed or happy to find that he was right, and takes a moment to pour the eggs over the onions when they've roasted long enough.

“What did you need?” Isak asks then, voice just a little different now that he's turned down towards his article again. “Maybe there's something in mine.”

Even smiles to himself, glancing over at Isak's grimoire. He's always loved Isak's grimoire.

Whereas his own has been passed down in his family for a few generations, like a lot of them are, Isak hadn't wanted to wait for his fifteenth birthday. According to family legend, Isak had always been an extremely curious child, able to make the mobile of planets and moons and stars above his crib dance in the wind before he'd been able to crawl. Almost as soon as he'd learned how to read and write, he started studying his mother's grimoire, annoyed he wasn't yet allowed to take his own notes in it. To change things when he found they didn't work for him.

Isak's grimoire is really more of a collection of notebooks. Only the newest ones, starting with the thick leather-bound one Even gave him when the one he’d used at the time had run out shortly after they started seeing each other, are currently in use. But the first one is a small notebook that seven year old Isak bought with his own pocket money, saved up especially for that. The first page of it proudly displays Isak's name in coloured felt tip pens, each letter a different colour, arranged in a neat rainbow.

From there on it's notebook after notebook, Isak having filled many of them over the years. They're almost like a diary, rather than a grimoire – a chronic of Isak working out spells and potions, notes scribbled on top of notes, handwriting going from the early childish, careful scrawl to the chicken scratch of his upper secondary school days, to the slightly more legible handwriting he'd developed at university. It’s also written in his own shorthand that he'd fallen in at university, hundreds of hours of physics lectures having led to his own system of symbols and abbreviations.

Most of the time Even has to read a line three times over before he understands it, much like he has to in the early parts of his own grimoire – the only difference being that his great-grandmother's handwriting doesn't make any sense to the modern eye. And that's before he adjusts for dialect. Even has learned more about extinct Norwegian dialects than he ever planned to, trying to translate his own family's spells.

“I just wanted to check that wide-scale amplifying spell we tried that one time,” Even says, pulling himself back out of his thoughts and remembering he has eggs to stir so they won't burn.

Isak hums like he's trying to remember.

“The one that didn't work?” he finally asks.

“Yeah, I had an idea about it the other day but I couldn't remember if we already tried that.”

“I'll help you look after breakfast,” Isak says. “Sana's coming over after lunch.”

“Thanks, yeah,” Even says, and then opens the cabinet, calling over two plates while he turns the stove off so he can plate the eggs.

The pestle stops its dance and the crushed up rosemary floats over, falling over the eggs like tiny, green snowflakes. When Even turns around to tell Isak he's done, Isak's already set the tablet and notebook aside and he's smiling up at Even.

The plates set themselves down while Even pulls out his chair, forks settling next to their plates. When Even looks over at Isak, he winks.

“Oops. Thanks,” Even says with a small smile.

Isak stretches out his leg to touch the side of his ankle to Even's under the table and smiles back.

“Thank _you,_ ” Isak says, and brushes his hair back over his shoulder again, tucking it behind his ears so he can eat without it getting in the way.

“Will you let me braid it later?” Even asks, grabbing his fork and spreading the eggs around the plate a little so they'll cool off more quickly.

Isak does the same, but looks up at Even with amusement dancing in his eyes and curling his pretty lips.

“Are you going to keep playing with it if I don't?” Isak asks back.

Even shrugs innocently while another gust of wind comes in from the balcony and ruffles Isak's hair gently.

Isak huffs a playfully annoyed sigh and rolls his eyes.

“Alright,” he says, and then turns to his eggs, shoving a forkful in his mouth.

Even beams back.

Isak isn't a traditionalist, but his mother is, and the witch’s braid is one of the things Isak simply grew up with. A remnant of coven-culture days from at least two centuries ago passed down in families like Isak’s mother's, where magic is as natural a thing to teach a child as table manners or riding a bike. So all of Isak's childhood photos show him with long hair, flowing freely behind him or done up in braids. He’d cut it off at the start of upper secondary school, sick of the teasing he'd receive from the other boys and the relationship with his mother already strained. But when he started university, his relationship with his mother mended and healing, he started growing it out again. Even always thought he did it to please her first, to show his commitment to their relationship and offer a link to their shared past they had to try so hard to reconcile.

Even fell in love with Isak when his hair was short, curling around his ears and only just long enough to curl around Even's fingers, and he found him beautiful then. He finds him no more and no less beautiful now, when his hair hangs down past his shoulder blades.

When Isak braids his hair himself, he does so with quick, distracted fingers, sweeping his hair over one shoulder and snapping a hair tie around it after less than a minute. Even likes to take his time, likes to give Isak’s hair the one hundred brush strokes it definitely deserves and carding his fingers through it a lot more than technically needed.

Even may or may not be a little biased when it comes to Isak’s hair.

“You have a problem,” Isak comments idly, snapping Even back out of his thoughts.

“Liking your hair is absolutely no problem for me, I assure you,” Even says with a grin, earning himself another fondly amused eye roll.

Isak’s already almost done with his eggs, lips a little shiny with butter, so Even hurries a bit to catch up.

“Can I finish my article while you get your fix of my hair?” Isak asks when he's done, only half teasing.

Even sends the plates to the sink and briefly presses his foot down on Isak’s toes in retaliation.

“Yes,” he says, and gets up, hairbrush floating into the room and into his waiting hand.

“Perfect,” Isak says, and grabs the front of Even's sweater to pull him down for another gentle kiss. Then he pulls his tablet and notebook back over and goes back to his reading.

Even lets himself get lost in the repetitive motion of brushing Isak’s hair, the soft rasp of the hairbrush running through it. It's almost as good as meditation, this. Isak's hair naturally parts a little off-centre, so he starts the braid a little higher there on one side, pulling all the hair away from Isak's face and wrapping the braid around his head to the back. Then he repeats the action on the other side, joining the two braids together to dangle down Isak's back in a two-strand 'fishtail' braid. He goes in with his fingers once he's done, loosens it all up so the hair won't pull quite so heavily on Isak's scalp and then leans around him to kiss him on the cheek.

“All done?” Isak asks.

“Yeah,” Even says and leans back again, lets Isak get back to finishing the rest of the article, and goes to water their plants instead.

Afterwards, he goes to brush his teeth and put on clothes, straightens out the bed while he's in the room, and when he goes back to see if Isak's still busy in the kitchen, he's met with his grimoire on the table beside him and Isak's smug grin.

“Where was it?” Even asks, sitting down opposite Isak again and pulling the book over.

“Buried under the cushions on the sofa,” Isak says.

Even pouts.

“I looked there!” he insists.

“It was the pixies, probably,” Isak says with a sly grin.

Even shoots him a look and affects a shudder.

“Don't even joke about that.”

Isak laughs and then glances over at the clock on the wall before he looks back at Even.

“You don't have to go into work today?”

Even smiles, and grabs the grimoire.

“No, I do, just not as early. And it's nice out, so I can broom in,” he says, getting back up again. “I'll ask Noora to meet me after, see if we can do anything about the amplification spell.”

Isak nods along.

“Will you be back before dinner?”

“Yeah, I should be,” Even says. “Are you cooking?”

Isak hums a little and then nods.

“I think so. If I don't, I'll call in some food. You don't have to worry about it.”

“Alright, thanks,” Even says with small nod of his own and then turns on his heel to go and pack his bag. He texts Noora about meeting up in the afternoon, kisses Isak goodbye, and grabs his broom from beside the open balcony door.

It is a nice day today, so there's more than just the handful of regular broomsters up in the air, and Even waves over at their neighbour who's getting ready to take off herself.

“Gotta take advantage of the weather, right?” she calls over with a laugh, and Even laughs his agreement.

“Safe flight!” she calls, and then she's off before Even can even get out a 'you too'.

He's always loved flying, the feeling of the wind in his hair, the way the world looks from above, his feet dangling from the broom. He's always preferred riding his broom side-saddle too, even if it means he has to take it slower. There's just something about the feeling of being carried on, well, magic, mostly, that makes Even's heart race and a smile pull at his lips without his thinking about it. Safe for maybe the way being with Isak makes him feel, there's nothing Even knows to compare to this.

No one in Even's family had cared much about their magic in a good long while, so he'd learned on his own, stubbornly flexing the muscles of his magic through the bumps and bruises as he'd tumbled back to the ground over and over. His parents had mostly watched and sighed and asked him if this was really necessary when a bike could get him to school just as quickly, and decidedly more safely.

Then when Even had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it had been suggested – subtly, by his parents, and less so, by his first therapist – that he should probably stop experimenting. The unpredictable nature of the element his power was tied to most tightly and the unpredictable nature of his _condition_ , they'd said, might feed off each other and send him into another tailspin.

Besides, there were plenty other things Even showed great talent for. And plenty of ways to get around magic, these days.

It had been Isak who had encouraged him to connect to his element again and not let his magic atrophy, who had taught him that the air Even had grown to resent could be beautiful too. All Even had seen were the volatility of his element, the lack of a physical form to connect with, the flightiness and inability to depend on air people that Even had been trying to distance himself from his whole life. But Isak had seen levity, freedom. A non-oppressive omni-presence. Something so commonly relied on, people don't even notice it.

These days, Even freelances as a sound technician and sonic witch, most often for NRK, putting both his proficiency with air magic and sound engineering degree as well as his love of audio-visual storytelling to good use. On most days, like today, that means he shows up on a set or at a recording studio and makes sure the sound recorded is the best quality it can be. He takes care of sonic interference, ambient sound, the like. This detection and manipulation of sound also means he has a pretty good knack for picking up on the frequency or intensity of a voice – be it a piece of dialogue or singing – and echoing or contradicting it with music.

He's working with a group of people he's done several projects with before right now, so they're all used to each others' methods and quirks by now. It makes for a much smoother working experience, and Even feels like barely any time at all passes before he's back on his broom gliding through the late spring sunshine high above Oslo. He knocks on Noora's window because he can't be bothered to land, and laughs when she startles at the sight of him in mid-air.

“We do have a doorbell,” she says drily, when she's thrown the window open to let him in.

Even grins his most charming smile.

“But that's no fun.”

“Breaking your neck trying to fit your gigantic limbs through a window isn't fun either,” Noora counters, hands on her hips for a moment before she breaks and gives him a smile.

“Hello, though. I wasn't expecting your text at all,” she says and leans in to kiss his cheeks hello. “I didn't know you were working on a spell right now?”

“I wasn't,” Even says, and leans his broom against the wall by the window. “But I had this idea last night and I wanted to see if it was something Isak and I'd already tried or not, and what you think of the whole thing in the first place.”

Noora listens closely, the way she always does, her focus complete, and then smiles. She's not only the best air witch Even knows, she has a way of giving people attention that Even really admires. There's nothing half-assed about Noora.

“Well, then. Let's have it!” she says. “Tea?”

“Yes, please,” Even says, and then follows Noora to her kitchen, getting out his grimoire and settling in.

By the time he makes it home, the sun's only a few hours from almost setting, but knowing Isak he'll have been buried in his own research until not long ago when Sana would have left to go back home to her husband. He hovers over their balcony for a moment before he gets off, turns around to watch the city and the trees, the fluffy white clouds against the blue sky, and then hops down onto the concrete floor softly.

The curtains billow in the breeze he brings with him, Isak standing by the stove with his back to him.

“Hi, baby,” he says, turns around to look at Even before turning back to the pot.

“What are you making?” Even asks. He leans his broom back against the wall by the balcony door, sets his bag down on the floor next to it, and then walks over to Isak, wrapping his arms around his middle and hooking his chin over Isak's shoulder to look into the pot.

“Risotto,” Isak says, stirring the sticky rice a little. “With mushroom and bell peppers.”

Even hums in satisfaction, stomach suddenly a little tighter as he remembers he skipped lunch, only snacking on a few carrot sticks and some hummus at Noora's. It was good hummus, but not enough for a full meal.

“Yum,” he says, for good measure, and sways Isak back and forth a little, making him laugh gently.

“Good day?” Isak asks, leaning back a little, his temple coming to rest against Even's.

“Yeah, pretty good,” Even says. “Did you go out for a flight? It's so nice out still.”

“For a bit, yeah,” Isak says. “Took Sana home.”

“How gentlemanly,” Even teases, making Isak laugh again.

“We needed the air,” Isak says.

Even grins to himself. Isak and Sana really do enable each other's inside-dwelling, study-only tendencies.

“But did you have a good day? Was the essay as promising as you thought it would be?”

“Yeah,” Isak says, reaching down to turn off the stove. “There's some really good stuff there.”

Even moves away from Isak to set the table, calling over plates and glasses and cutlery, while Isak fills a jug with water and sets down the still-steaming pot of risotto. The blossoms of the starflower glitter in the low light of the room, the night not quite dark enough to require light, not quite bright enough to be daylight.

Isak reaches over and strokes a petal between his thumb and pointer finger gently, smiling down at the little blossoms.

“You know what I think it is?” Isak asks, while Even dishes them both up some risotto.

“What what is?” Even asks back.

“Why it's still blooming,” Isak says, letting go of the flower and looking up at Even.

“Because I love you so much, of course,” Even jokes.

That's what this flower is for, after all. Starflowers picked under a full moon when the sky is pink and presented to a fellow witch are a sign of devotion. They say 'I take control of my own fate, and I want you to share in it'. It's an old tradition, one that Even found in his great-grandmother's grimoire as a teenager. It's a bit silly, maybe, because it's just a flower in the end, but Even is nothing if not romantic to a fault, and Isak is almost as bad as him.

Isak huffs a short laugh.

“Yes, actually,” he says.

Even stills and stares across the table at Isak.

Isak smiles back, eyes shining easily as brightly as the starflowers do.

“Really?”

Isak nods and picks up his fork, poking at his food idly.

“I think love is where all magic comes from,” he says, and then looks up at Even to smile at him and shrug.

Even knows. Isak's explained it a lot, over the years. The way that his connection to his element, the aether, feels just like his connection to Even does. And the aether is said to be the purest element, magically. Being connected to the aether is almost like being connected to the essence of magic itself, people used to say. That's why it's a significantly rarer element than the other four.

“But I'm an air witch,” Even points out.

“So?” Isak asks back. “I can do some air spells. And if aether is magic itself, then we're all connected to it, in some ways. It'd make sense that love is the most immediate way to access it. It's one of the deepest things we feel.”

“You're actually saying you think this flower keeps blooming because I love you?” Even asks, somewhat awe-struck.

“And because I love you,” Isak says. Even can practically watch him shift into science-mode before he goes on. “We have a workable theory of how quantum entanglement plays into photosynthesis, how it helps turn light-harvested kinetic energy into chemical energy, so what if when we take quantum entanglement to a macro level what we get is love? I can't describe me fully without you, and I can't describe you fully without me. That's love, but it's also entanglement.”

“I only understood about half of that, but… wow,” Even says.

Isak laughs again and ducks his head a little. Even will never tire of hearing him talk about his work, about magic. About love.

“I do love you,” Even says, reaching his hand across the table and waiting for Isak to take it and tangle their fingers.

“I love you too,” Isak says. “So much it can feed a whole magical flower.”

This time it's Even's turn to laugh, and Isak watches proudly. Then, with barely more than a tilt of his head at the ceiling, he makes a replica of a cloudless night sky spread out above them, stars shining closer than they could ever get to otherwise, tiny little lights hanging in the air above and around them.

“Show-off,” Even teases, but stares around at the stars in their kitchen before looking back at Isak.

Isak shrugs, unrepentant, and picks up his fork, going into how Sana and her earth magic might be a valuable resource to compare the photosynthesis process to whatever it is that might allow a plant to live off of things other than light. Things like magic. Like love.

Even picks his fork up too, using his non-dominant hand since the other one's still comfortably entwined with Isak's, and listens. No matter how many times Isak explains, he has no idea what femtosecond spectroscopy does or what the hell a Peres-Horodecki criterion is. But Isak's eyes shine as brightly as the stars when he speaks about it, and Even would listen to far less interesting things to keep that light shining.

And later, when they go to bed, Isak brings the stars with them, and the only thing they entangle are their bodies.

 

**The End**


End file.
